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GeForce 8800 Ultra vs Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Intro

The GeForce 8800 Ultra uses a 90 nm design. nVidia has set the core speed at 612 MHz. The GDDR3 RAM runs at a frequency of 1080 MHz on this particular card. It features 128 SPUs along with 64 TAUs and 24 Rasterization Operator Units.

Compare all of that to the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, which has a clock frequency of 750 MHz and a GDDR5 memory frequency of 900 MHz. It also makes use of a 256-bit memory bus, and makes use of a 55 nm design. It is comprised of 800(160x5) SPUs, 40 TAUs, and 16 ROPs.

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Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB 150 Watts
GeForce 8800 Ultra 171 Watts
Difference: 21 Watts (14%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon HD 4870 512MB should be a bit faster than the GeForce 8800 Ultra overall. (explain)

Radeon HD 4870 512MB 115200 MB/sec
GeForce 8800 Ultra 103680 MB/sec
Difference: 11520 (11%)

Texel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is much (about 31%) more effective at AF than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra 39168 Mtexels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 30000 Mtexels/sec
Difference: 9168 (31%)

Pixel Rate

The GeForce 8800 Ultra is quite a bit (approximately 22%) more effective at FSAA than the Radeon HD 4870 512MB, and also will be able to handle higher screen resolutions while still performing well. (explain)

GeForce 8800 Ultra 14688 Mpixels/sec
Radeon HD 4870 512MB 12000 Mpixels/sec
Difference: 2688 (22%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

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GeForce 8800 Ultra

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

Specifications

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Model GeForce 8800 Ultra Radeon HD 4870 512MB
Manufacturer nVidia AMD
Year May 2007 Jun 25, 2008
Code Name G80 RV770 XT
Memory 768 MB 512 MB
Core Speed 612 MHz 750 MHz
Memory Speed 2160 MHz 3600 MHz
Power (Max TDP) 171 watts 150 watts
Bandwidth 103680 MB/sec 115200 MB/sec
Texel Rate 39168 Mtexels/sec 30000 Mtexels/sec
Pixel Rate 14688 Mpixels/sec 12000 Mpixels/sec
Unified Shaders 128 800(160x5)
Texture Mapping Units 64 40
Render Output Units 24 16
Bus Type GDDR3 GDDR5
Bus Width 384-bit 256-bit
Fab Process 90 nm 55 nm
Transistors 681 million 956 million
Bus PCIe x16 PCIe 2.0 x16
DirectX Version DirectX 10 DirectX 10.1
OpenGL Version OpenGL 3.0 OpenGL 3.0

Memory Bandwidth: Memory bandwidth is the largest amount of information (in units of MB per second) that can be moved across the external memory interface within a second. It's worked out by multiplying the card's interface width by the speed of its memory. If the card has DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and high resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that can be processed per second. This figure is calculated by multiplying the total texture units by the core clock speed of the chip. The better the texel rate, the better the video card will be at texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels processed per second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the maximum number of pixels that the graphics chip could possibly write to its local memory per second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the amount of Raster Operations Pipelines by the the core clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - sometimes also referred to as Render Output Units) are responsible for filling the screen with pixels (the image). The actual pixel rate also depends on lots of other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth of the card - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.

Display Prices

Hide Prices

GeForce 8800 Ultra

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Radeon HD 4870 512MB

Amazon.com

Check prices at:

Please note that the price comparisons are based on search keywords - sometimes it might show cards with very similar names that are not exactly the same as the one chosen in the comparison. We do try to filter out the wrong results as best we can, though.

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